Updated 20 December 2018
The inspection:
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection checked whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
Inspection team:
The inspection team consisted of one inspector, an assistant inspector and an Expert by Experience. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.
Service and service type:
Allied Healthcare Salisbury is a domiciliary care agency (DCA). The service provides personal care to people living in their own homes in the community and people living in extra care housing schemes.
There was a registered manager. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
Notice of inspection:
We gave the provider 48 hours’ notice of the inspection visit because we needed to be sure the management would be in the office. We visited the office location on 6 and 7 November 2018 to see the registered manager and office staff and to review care records, policies and procedures. We visited two of the extra care housing schemes on 12 November 2018 and met with people who used the service and staff.
What we did:
Before the inspection we reviewed the information we held about the service and the service provider. The registered provider completed a Provider Information Return (PIR). This is a form that asks the provider to give some key information about the service, what the service does well and improvements they plan to make. We looked at the notifications we had received for this service. Notifications are information about important events the service is required to send us by law.
We spoke with 17 people to gather their views about the care they received. This was a mixture of face to face and telephone conversations. During the office site visit we looked at records, which included 12 people’s care and medicines records. We checked recruitment, training and supervision records for four staff. We also looked at a range of records about how the service was managed. We spoke with the registered manager, regional operations manager, recruitment manager and six care staff.
After our site visit we contacted external health and social care professionals and commissioners to obtain their views about the service.